Ticketmaster and Live Nation (both suck)

I have a question. Why don’t venues sell their own tickets? I’ve been reading a lot recently about the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger, and yes, I agree, it would be a bad thing. But why are they the only options for tickets? Maybe back in the day, before every venue had its own website (and myspace, and Facebook fan page, and twitter account…) you would need to go to a different site to buy tickets online. But now, most venues have their own websites (and they’re flashier and better organized than Ticketmaster and Live Nation), usually with someone on staff who runs it. Knowing that these venues already have some way of selling tickets set up (they do still have box offices, right?), how much harder would it be to open up a Paypal account and sell tickets themselves?

The biggest problem almost everyone I know has with online ticketing is merely that the convenience charges are almost as much as the tickets themselves. I just bought $35 Jimmy Eat World tickets for $54. Get rid of Ticketmaster AND Live Nation, and start selling tickets yourself! I had no problem paying $54 (well, I did, but still…I wasn’t going to miss Jimmy Eat World!!!), and had the venue charged it instead of Ticketmaster, they would get *all* of that money, instead of giving it to other people. If venues are so concerned about the future of the live music industry in this crappy economy, they should get rid of as many extra charges as possible, and focus on keeping ticket prices low.

Now, granted, I don’t know how to set up an account with Paypal to accept money. I do know, however, that the 11:11am Charity (a bunch of emo kids who love Something Corporate) could do it, all while in school (aka not too much time to spare). You already have people who work the box office, and probably a webmaster as well. It would take at most one hour to set up a paypal account, and maybe another hour a day for one of the people in the box office to log into the account, print out all the new sales, and stuff the tickets into envelopes and send them off. So raise ticket prices 2 bucks (hey, it’s still going to be cheaper than the $8 per ticket service charges), and pay someone a couple bucks extra to be in charge of that. Even better, keep the ticket prices the same price, get rid of service charges, and hire an *intern* to stuff envelopes (and maybe let them into a concert or two in exchange).

I realize that this may not be the best solution for a 50,000 person venue (a couple interns, instead of just one?), but for a lot of venues – the 500-2000 person clubs – I honestly believe this will increase sales and bring in more money in the long term, and it’s not like you have to give up that much money to start.

So, remind me, why are Ticketmaster and Live Nation so amazing?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/05/ticketmaster.livenation/index.html